If I Could Dream
by Rat-chan
Summary: When he first met Arthur, Nash could still dream... Introspective character study kind of thing. One sided Nash/Arthur. Rated for language, violent themes, and sexual content.


**Disclaimer: **Not my characters. Not making money from them.

**Notes: **OK. A very rare (for me) bit of unprompted writing, and in a style I haven't written in years... I guess I just needed to write some Nash and this is what came.

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I could still dream when I first knew you - so long ago it seems now. I saw you in reality, pale cool, and beautiful, like a marble statue the artist forgot to carve a smile on. At night, I could shape that smile with a word or a touch. Modest dreams, but still some of the most vivid I ever had on my own.

And the last real dreams I remember.

Years passed. I saw you rarely, but when we worked together, I watched you – I couldn't help but watch you. My eyes traced the nearly straight line of your mouth, though they stung from time to time at the growing impossibility of my old dreams. Of its own volition, my gaze moved to you in dreams, following every lethal, graceful motion, despite the growing distraction it was becoming. Despite the heat it brought to the dreamscape if I was the dreamer at that time. You scolded me the time this heated distraction melted away snow in the dream, almost ruining the job. My eyes locked on the faintly pink tint of your cheeks as my ears warmed at the sound of something other than indifference in your voice and my lips parted to catch your breath when you leaned in, closer than you'd ever come before. If I could have dreamed that night, I would have seen that same flush all over your body… felt that heat in my arms, under me, around me...

But I couldn't dream and the flimsy fantasies of my waking imagination and inadequate heat of my own hand were nowhere near enough. So I watched you even more carefully than before. I studied you while you slept, memorizing every plane of your face, every curve of your body. I learned the heat of your breath and the rhythm of your pulse as I monitored your sleep, stroking my hand over yours while I pretended to check the PASIV. I extrapolated every breath, beat, and the smallest touch into a projection of you that would love me – would make love to me as the real you never would.

For a while, it was almost enough. Every night I could, I plugged myself into the PASIV and my dream of you smiled as I took him in my arms. His slim, beautiful hips trembled in my hands and his arms tightened around me as I moved over him. He called my name over and over as we reached our climax at the same moment.

Of course, the satisfaction was pale. And it didn't last. Each time I woke from those dreams, I felt their emptiness – my emptiness – more and more. Awake or sharing dreams, I watched you with others. I saw you show them a warmth of emotion you never even hinted at with me… And my dreams changed… grew darker.

I saw the hot, angry glare you leveled at that forger Eames after he made some teasing comment. That night, when I plugged in the PASIV, I held down my projection of you and fucked him. Hard.

I watched the trust and loyalty you had for Cobb grow, little by little, until even those that didn't know you could see your esteem for him pouring out your eyes, filling every word you spoke to him, softening the hard lines of your neutral expression. More and more, when I decided to dream of you, I tied your projection to the bed. I teased and tormented him (you) until tears filled his (your) dark, lovely eyes and he (you) begged me to fuck him (you).

And after Cobb's wife died, I had more and more opportunities to watch you – to see your beauty, strength, and grace… To see the utter contempt you held me in. Finally, there was the Cobol job. I made one, simple mistake. After so many jobs together, after countless successful extractions, after so many long fucking years waiting for one kind word from you, you ripped into me for one tiny error. You didn't even get properly angry. You just looked at me with all that haughty disdain and asked me how I could screw things up that much.

And you didn't have the least notion of how much that fucking hurt. You didn't see a hint of my pain and anger – pain and anger that twisted my insides until I had to vomit in the tiny toilet on the train, unsure whether the rushing sound I heard was the wind of the train's passage or the angry roaring of my own blood, echoing in my ears.

I wonder if you even have the faintest idea now? Did selling you and Cobb out to Saito make the tiniest impression on your mind?

Probably not. I saw your expression (or more accurately, your lack of one) when Saito's thugs dragged me away. You probably think I did it in an attempt to save my own skin. The truth? I just wanted you to feel some of the pain you've caused me. I wanted to hurt you and someone you cared about so that you might feel a _fraction_ of the pain and emptiness you've given me over the years.

I have no way of knowing now how much I succeeded, if at all. I don't even know where the hell they've taken me or how long I've been here. It's dark and cold and there are no dreams to tell me if and when I sleep. Do I want to dream? I don't even know _that_. If I could dream now, what would I see? Would I see you and Cobb dead or worse at Saito's hands? Would I enjoy that? Or would I see my projection of you? Would we be together in some dirty cell and would I hurt and degrade him as I have been? Would I strike him and push him down on the cold, hard floor? Would I pound into him mercilessly as he cries out for Cobb, for Mal, for Eames, for every goddamned person he cares about instead of me?

Maybe. And it might bring some vindictive pleasure to my last moments.

But… still… when it's coldest here… when I can't find the memory of light for the fear of the dark… I wish…

I wish I could dream of you as I did so long ago. I wish I could dream of one, small, warm smile to take with me when I go.


End file.
